Something in the world of floating have you stumped?
Show Highlights
The Parasympathetic Nervous System is the part of your body that gets really excited when the rest of your body is winding down. Taking care of the digestive and rest systems are an important part of human health and physiology. How do float tanks affect this system?
Many of the studies on floating have demonstrated an impact on the parasympathetic nervous system. Graham and Ashkahn talk about the information that’s been studied so far.
Show Resources
Buy your tickets for the 2018 Float Conference!
Book hotel rooms for the Float Conference
Check out our Free Scientific Research List for up to date information on all float related research
The Float Clinic at the Laureate Institute of Brain Research (Justin Feinstein’s research)
Annette Kjellgren’s Research page at Karlstad University
Justin Feinstein’s Talk at last year’s Float Conference
Tom Fine’s Talk from the 2014 Float Conference
The Float Research Panel from the 2015 Float Conference
Listen to Just the Audio
Transcription of this episode… (in case you prefer reading)
Graham: All right.
Ashkahn: Welcome.
Graham: Hello everybody.
Ashkahn: Yeah. This is Ashkahn.
Graham: I am Graham.
Ashkahn: We’re gonna answer a question today.
Graham: Which is, “have there been any studies that show floating engages the parasympathetic nervous system?” The old PNS.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Graham: Thank you for the question. Good luck finding them.
No, let’s start with what the parasympathetic nervous system is.
Ashkahn: Yeah. It’s not the sympathetic nervous system.
Graham: Bingo. Therein lies the entire story.
The sympathetic nervous system is generally much more active. It’s when your adrenal system activates. The parasympathetic nervous system is your rest and digest system, sometimes called.
Ashkahn: Yeah. The little phrases are fight or flight, versus rest and digest.
Graham: Yep. Parasympathetic is much more associated with things like digestion, as you can imagine, with your heart rate slowing, breathing slowing.
Ashkahn: Resting.
Graham: All these things, if you’re familiar with floating, which hopefully you are since you’re listening to us ramble on about it day after day.
Ashkahn: If not, welcome. It’s about to be really exciting to you.
Graham: Right, those are the activities we associate with floating. When you’re in the tank, your heart rate slows, your breathing slows, you calm down.
Ashkahn: People say they come out feeling very hungry sometimes.
Graham: It’s because you’re activating your parasympathetic nervous system. That’s what we’re talking about here.
Ashkahn: This is most likely a very simplified view of the entire thing, but I always think about it as our bodies react to the external environment. When there’s stuff you have to do or there’s an animal trying to eat you, or all the stuff that generally comes with staying alive, your body has to prioritize resources.
Graham: Yeah.
Ashkahn: If a bear is chasing you, your body is like, “You know what we should be doing right now is digesting food.” It allocates the resources it needs to deal with the much more important stuff that’s happening, and then when you don’t have things like that going on, your body shifts into another mode. It’s like, “Great, now we have time to do maintenance stuff. Let’s repair things, let’s rest, let’s grow.” Part of human growth can be part of the rest and digest system.
I think there’s very acute cases of children, of huge amounts of stress in their childhood actually being stunted in terms of their growth. All this stuff is our body switching the fire hose of resources around.
Graham: Yeah. As far as studies showing that that’s the system that’s being activated, for any study that actually looks at humanmetrics and is measuring heart rate, is measuring our brain wave levels even, or what’s going on to us physically in the tank, you’d be hard pressed to find any of those studies that don’t point to the parasympathetic nervous system being activated.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Like most of the stuff you hear about in terms of research, of cortisol levels, and heart rate, and blood pressure, and-
Graham: Breathing.
Ashkahn: Breathing. All these sorts of things are those kinds of effect, the effects of your body switching gears like that.
Graham: I’ll turn the question around to you listener and say, “Do you know of any studies that don’t show the parasympathetic nervous system being activated, that are focusing on humanmetrics.” ‘Cause I would say, “I can’t think of any.”
Ashkahn: Yeah. It seems like it’s just a big broad category of things that our body does, and almost everything is showing, I think that’s probably one of the symptoms of an overabundance of stress in our society, is that our bodies don’t have as much time to be in the parasympathetic nervous system mode as we used to. We used to have longer periods of activating that, and that just gets a little bit harder in modern society with cars, and blinking lights, and sound effects, and all that sort of stuff that our bodies interpret sometimes as things they need to respond to, and things they need to respond to with more of our active survival instincts.
Graham: Yeah. I remember having a discussion with Glenn Perry at some point, one of the founders of our industry, and owners of some Samadhi Tank Company. He was saying, it wasn’t that long ago where we’d finish up a day of work, and then maybe we’d sit on our porch and watch the sunset, and think about things that we done during the day. Maybe we’d reflect and say, “Oh, you know, I was a little too mean in that scenario.” Or, “Oh, my calf hurts. Maybe I should take it a little easy there.” It’s true, we’re a society of chronic stress these days. We don’t have that down time. To me, the fact that the float tanks do activate the parasympathetic nervous system, they, as Glen Perry was saying, recreate this end of the day relaxation contemplation that we used to get very naturally, is a lot of their benefit. It’s certainly at least for me, one of the big things that I take away from floating, is forcing that rest and digest system back into my busy life.
Of those, I guess just to name some, I would say the early ones like John Turner, Tom Fine, they took some really detailed metrics the best that they could do for the time when they were running research back in the ’80s, up through the ’90s. They’re some of the people whose early findings are showing this parasympathetic nervous system activating. More recently, Justin Feinstein has just been collecting a bunch of data on biological metrics and marking. Just to kick you off, those are two big ones. But I think Anette Kjellgren over in Sweden, and the Swedish researchers have also shown the same results. Again, any study that you’re looking into where it’s focusing on this biological aspect of floating, you’re probably find that same parasympathetic nervous system activation.
Question answered, I guess?
Ashkahn: Yeah. Yeah, I guess we did it. We only know so much about the technicalities of all this stuff. The same with that we’re not lawyers, or doctors, or economists. We’re also not researchers. I feel pretty good about the broad strokes of how all this stuff works, but I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of nuance too, to the human body.
Graham: I’ve never found that to be true, but if you disagree, go over to FloatTankSolutions.com/podcast and shoot in your own questions so we can embarrass ourselves with that analogy.
Ashkahn: Yeah. Please.
Graham: It’s what we live for.
Ashkahn: All right. Bye everybody.
Graham: Thanks.
Recent Podcast Episodes
What are average floater return rates? – DSP 84
Getting repeat customers is integral to the health of any business. For float centers, this is especially true. It can be worrying when we see our floaters leave the center, never knowing if they’ll return. There’s a very natural inclination to start tracking this trend to see if there’s anything you need to change about your business to attract repeat customers. Memberships are a natural way to attract repeat customers and can quickly become the lifeblood of your center, too.
But how do you measure it? What time frame is acceptable to consider a repeat customer? If they don’t float within six months, does that mean you’ve lost them? If they float once and don’t return for three years, is that a success on your part or a failure?
Graham and Ashkahn tackle all of this and more this time around. Check it out!
How to handle ‘Summer Slump’ in your float center – DSP 83
Many a float center has hit their first summer and seen their schedule thin out. What causes this? Is it just a seasonal thing? What about places that don’t really have seasons? Or tourist towns? What exactly causes this and what are some good tips to combat it? Graham and Ashkahn address this phenomenon head on in this episode.
Addressing customer misinformation – DSP 82
Every float center owner has to deal with customers who get, maybe, a little overenthusiastic about the float experience. What is the best way to deal with customers who say things that are just patently false about the benefits of floating? Do you just let it slide? Do you correct them and potentially offend your customer? It’s not their fault, they’re just excited. It doesn’t seem right to punish them.
This is definitely a tightrope walk type of conversation and it can have an impact on your customers and your reputation as a business, as well as the whole industry. As stewards of the tank, Graham and Ashkahn offer their advice on how best to have this difficult conversation and offer some resources to help with it as well.
Our Report on the Chinese Float Conference – DSP 81
Ashkahn went to China and brought another one of the owners of Float On along, Jake. The two of them share their experiences of visiting the Chinese Float Conference this year and learning about all of the developments in the Chinese float industry, which seems to have exploded in just the last couple of years.
Handling Common Client Concerns: Claustrophobia – DSP 80
This is something pretty much every float center deals with on a regular basis. The first objection that a lot of people will say when they first hear about floating is “Oh, I’m too claustrophobic for that”. Which… feels like getting shut down straight out of the gate.
Graham and Ashkahn, as seasoned float center owners, have heard this all too often and are not only familiar with it, but have some excellent ideas as to why this is the first major objection people throw out there as well as good ways to combat this concern.
Latest Blog Posts
No Results Found
The page you requested could not be found. Try refining your search, or use the navigation above to locate the post.
